Dicacious

So obstinate was this dicacious and pleonastic old man, in his struggles to monopolise the whole conversation in the salle-à-manger, that upon a gentle, respectable, and seedy English clergyman, with the usual amount of wife and children, gliding in, and beginning quietly to converse with his family, he violently wrenched the newspaper from the hands of the nearest waiter, and read out loud, at the top of his voice, an entire leading article!

Believers, then, as we are, in phrenology, we cannot say that we believe in it as a trade. It is a science ( so to speak ) in embryo. It may be likened to a noble edifice, the foundations of which are laid broad and deep, upon the principles of unchangeable, eternal truth, and the superstructure of which, it must be the work of patient perseverance, deep study, close observation, and rational philosophy to rear, range after range, until it shall stand a firm and lasting monument, at once of the blessings arising from a careful cultivation of those powers of research, into the deep mysteries of our nature, wherewith God has endowed us, as well as of his benevolent providence, his fatherly kindness, and his consummate wisdom. There will be quacks and sciolous pretenders around the edifice while it is rearing, with their handicraft tools, and dicacious mystifications ( ‘blind leaders of the blind’ ) — but as in the building of the great temple, the sound of the hammer and the axe must not be heard in preparing its massive ranges, as they rise, mind impelled, towards the sky, displaying to the world, at last, the true philosophy of that most wondrous work of the Creator — THE HUMAN MIND.

“Gr-r-r-r!” from Doctor Sims, lunging for the saltcellar as it skated away. “Your mental attitude, Martin, always inclines to the flippant and dicacious. Personally, I find the present exuberant actions of the ship most distasteful.”

I’d get back on to your medication pronto. Itself in response to the question posted by “tomcatpolka” at 2:22am: My dictionary says that lepid (pleasant, jocose) comes from the Latin lepidus. Should I think flitting like a butterfly or leaping like a rabbit?